focus on... home baking
44 | The Grocer | 20 July 2019 Get the full story at thegrocer.co.uk Get the full story at thegrocer.co.uk 20 July 2019 | The Grocer | PB
You don’t need a sweet
tooth to enjoy a cake
nowadays. In today’s sugar-
conscious era, savoury
cakes are gaining ground.
Admittedly, they aren’t
an entirely new concept.
Back in 2011, Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall
published a raft of savoury
cake recipes including
ham and olive cakes in The
Guardian. However, such
cakes didn’t hold much
mainstream appeal.
Until now, that is. The
savoury cake movement is
starting to pick up pace this
year, says Lydia Baines,
communications manager
at bakery ingredient
supplier Puratos UK.
According to its consumer
research, 75% of Brits are
interested in savoury cakes
- a figure reflected in the
large number of recipes
online. “The government is
pushing for a reduction in
sugar, so savoury patisserie
is very much in the press at
the moment. We’re seeing a
lot of blogs around savoury
muffins, savoury cakes and
savoury doughnuts.”
Indeed, MasterChef
champion Kenny Tutt’s new
restaurant, Pitch, which
opened on the south coast
in May, currently features
ham hock & cheddar and
goats cheese & truffle
honey doughnuts on its
experimental menu.
The growth of this kind
of fare inspired Puratos
to launch its own savoury
cake mix earlier in July.
The mix can be adapted
to create cakes, muffins or
biscuits. Baines believes
the product has the
potential to unlock a raft
of innovation in the home
baking aisle.
“Our customers can add
a raft of flavours like cheese
or curry paste to the mix
before putting it on shelf,”
she says. “Products that
help bakers create savoury
cakes like our new mix are
a virtually untapped retail
sector, and with consumer
interest on the up, it opens
up a lot of potential growth
for the category.”
Next up, Puratos plans
to launch a savoury choux
mix as part of its focus on
offering less sugary baking
options. It looks like ham
and cheese doughnuts
may not be the preserve of
experimental restaurants
for long.Savoury
cakes offer
alternative
to sugar
products that allow them to achieve fan-
tastic cake results in a user-friendly, conveni-
ent for mat.”
Dr Oetker has also reaped the rewards with
its range of edible decorations, including new
lines such as unicorn and dinosaur sprinkles
(p43). That’s helped it become one of the few
home baking brands in growth this year, up
2.3% to £13.8m [Nielsen].
Brown says the same principle has boosted
sales of Dr Oetker’s premium vanilla flavour-
ing brand Taylor & Colledge, which is up
10.2% to £2.8m [IRI]. “Flavour extracts like
vanilla are proving to be key for the premium
market, as provenance and credentials such
as responsible sourcing play a bigger role in
purchasing decisions,” she explains.Specialist boost
As Kantar data shows, all other areas of home
baking are in decline. Still, that doesn’t mean
they’re missing out on the premium trend.
Although flour sales have dipped £1.9m at a
total level, the speciality stuff is flying ahead.
It now represents a whopping 45% of the
entire flour market.
“In flour we can see two extremes hap-
pening,” explains Premier Foods’ Touchais.
In own label, she says shoppers are increas-
ingly looking for the cheapest option. Kantar
data backs up her point, showing a 4.2%
drop in average price across own label flour.
Still, Touchias says “at the other end of the
spectrum there are people trading up into
premium flours like coconut”. And that’s
resulting in a 4.9% rise in average prices
across branded flour lines.
Growing interest in speciality flours bodes
well for the likes of Doves Farm, whose pre-
mium organic flours include quinoa, teff and
brown rice. “Both organic and ancient grain
flours are becoming more mainstream,” says
brand CEO Clare Marriage. “In the past 12
months, sales of organic flour have grown
1.5%, spelt flour is up 16.8% and rye flour is
up 34.6%. There’s a real demand growing for
premium flours that offer something different
in home baking.”
The same story is apparent in sugar, which
dropped £2m this year. Nick James, market-
ing director at Tate & Lyle Sugars, says certain
products are bucking that decline. “Sugar has
been declining for several years, but we’ve
started to see value creep back into the market
recently,” he says. “We can see some shoppers
switching from what you might call standard
white sugar into the more specialist, baking
associated segments like brown and golden
sugar this year.
“That’s partly due to the more natural cues
of brown and golden sugars, but they also
add a different, often more premium flavour
or colour to a bake.”
Then there’s cake mixes, which lost 5.3%
in value due to fewer shoppers and 4.4%